even though the place is pretty remote, we enjoy coming here for a couple weeks each year. There is a lot of desert to explore and it can be a relaxing place. The RV park is actually located a couple of miles South of Salome on U.S. Highway 60 in a community called Harcuvar, named after a local mountain range. Salome is a small ranching community, founded in 1904 by a guy named Charles Pratt and two brothers, Earnest and Dick Wick Hall. Pratt was founding the town as a support base for a new railroad through the Eastern Arizona Territory and was speculating on where the railroad would lay its tracks, Unfortunately, he miscalculated by a mile so the community had to be moved to its present location a couple years later. The Post Office was established April 14th, 1905, and later moved to the current town site in 1906.Dick Wick Hall was a widely known wit who published many stories in the Saturday Evening Post. Born in 1877 in Creston, Iowa, Dick's given name was DeForest Hall, He was a well known journalist and "political operative." In honor of his mentor, Henry Wickenburg, the miner after whom the town of Wickenburg, Arizona is named, he changed his name to "Dick Wick Hall." Hall died suddenly in 1926. You can find Dick Wick Hall's grave site in Salome on Center Street 2 blocks North of Hwy 60.
After settling in on Thursday we decided to just stay in for the rest of the day. We did some house cleaning to get rid of the dust we accumulated during our stay in Quartzsite. We got together with Peggy and Vernon Bullock, our friends who have been traveling with us for the last month, for cocktails and a dinner of leftover sushi and Halibut chowder which Jackie had made for the group in Quartzsite.
Friday, January 28th was also designated a day of leisure. It seems like we have been on the run and busy ever since our arrival in Indio before Christmas, so we felt we needed a down day. Salome is a great place to do that and the weather was perfect, temperatures in the low seventies and clear blue skies. We spent the entire day around the coach, just playing games and watching TV. Jackie made an enchilada casserole for dinner and we had cocktails and dinner with the Bullocks.
Saturday we loaded the car with us, Peggy and Vernon and their puppy Belle and left before lunch for a road trip. We needed to do some light shopping and wanted to go to a Walmart, the closest of which was in Parker, Arizona, on the Colorado River about 50 miles Northwest of Salome. We decided to make a day of it and did some caching along the way to Parker. When we got into town we stopped for lunch at a great Mexican restaurant called El Serape. We didn’t know where to eat and while we were looking for cache in a city park in Parker there was a Border Patrol agent parked in the parking lot watching traffic. Jackie and Peggy walked over and asked her where to eat. She said that there always seemed to be a lot of cars in the parking lot of the El Serape, but she had never eaten there. Since we all love Mexican food, and a lot of cars is usually a good sign, we went there. The food was excellent, as was the service. It was also reasonably priced. We would highly recommend the place which is right on U.S. 95, which is Riverside Drive, South of the airport.
After lunch we did some more caching in the Parker area. We ended up with a total of eight caches with no DNFs. We then made a quick stop at the Parker Elks Lodge for a refreshment. We had been to this lodge back in 2005, but had not been back since. Peggy and Vernon got a lodge pin for their budding collection, however, we already have one on our banner. After the lodge visit we hit Walmart and then drove the hour back to Salome. The lunch was so good, and so filling we didn’t even do dinner.
Monday, January 31st - Holy cow, the first month of the new year already ending! The weather this morning was cool and very windy, not good caching weather in the desert. We decided to do our laundry after lunch right here at the park. Later in the evening we joined Peggy and Vernon for cocktails and then BBQed some burgers for dinner. Peggy and Vernon had gone out in the afternoon to do some geocaching on their own. After finding their first cache in Salome, they headed out into the desert for their second and ended up punching a hole in one of their Jeep’s tires. End of caching for the day. Bummer. When he took it to a local place for repair they told him the tear was in the sidewall and was not repairable. I guess we will be out with them looking for a tire somewhere in the next day or two.
Tuesday, the 1st day of February already. The morning was again cool (40 degrees) and windy. Vernon has decided to just wait until we get to Ehrenburg, Arizona, near Blythe, California, next week to get tires. There is no where close to where we are in Salome to get a used tire of the right size to
use as a spare. After lunch, when it warmed up a bit, the four of us went out to do some caching. We were doing desert caching which greatly increases the time between finds, so we were only able to get six caches in a about three hours. Nonetheless, we had fun and rode some interesting Jeep trails out in the desert, including one that led to an old mine site. The cache was inside of the remains of an old rock cabin. Very cool. After caching we went back to the RV park, had cocktails with the Bullocks and then spent a relaxing night at home.Wednesday, February 2nd we woke up with no water because the supply hose outside was frozen solid! The outside thermometer said it was 27 degrees and there were icicles hanging down from under the coach near the bay where the water and sewer connections go in. I have a slight water leak and when the water hit the outside air it froze. Yikes. The wind is still blowing too, so I am guessing the wind chill temperature is in the teens. Way too cold for Arizona. Fortunately, the furnaces worked to heat up the coach and I had water in the fresh water tank so we were able to turn on our internal water source and didn’t have to rely on the outside supply. I also ran down to the store and bought an inexpensive automotive work light and a 100 watt bulb to use to keep the bay with the water pump and bottom of the fresh water tank, from freezing. Since the bay is closed in, putting a lit 100 bulb inside produces enough heat to keep the interior above freezing, which would be bad for the internal plumbing of the coach since it is all plastic piping.
We decided it was way too cold and windy to do anything, the weather forecast said it was only going to get up to 42 today. We stayed in until after lunch when the four of us, we and Peggy and Vernon, went down to the park’s pool/card room and we taught them how to play Texas hold’em poker. They knew basic poker, but had never played the hold’em variety. We played for a couple of hours and had a good time. I then went home and made a big pot of chili for dinner. Peggy and Vernon came over for cocktails and dinner with us. The chili turned out great, especially nice on a cold day. After dinner we chatted for a bit and after Peggy and Vernon left we relaxed the rest of the evening.
Thursday, February 3rd was another very cold morning, 25 degrees this time. The outside water supply was disconnected so we didn’t have to worry about not having water this time. My light bulb heater in the water bay kept everything down there from freezing, so we still had water for showers and such. About 10:00 a.m. the four of us got in our car for a day of caching and sightseeing in Wickenburg, Arizona, about 55 miles Northeast of Salome. We had a little issue when we first started out because the tire pressure monitoring system on our Jeep was showing a low tire. I was fairly certain that it was only because it was so cold outside - tire pressure is temperature sensitive, getting lower with the cold. The indicator showed it was only one pound below the “low air” threshold, so I drove the car on the highway for a mile or so and watched as the pressure came up like it should as the tire warmed up from the driving. I stopped for fuel and afterwards all the tires showed normal pressure, but my warning light was still flashing. I really didn’t want to drive over 50 miles with a warning light, even though I was fairly certain the pressures were OK, so I started back towards the park. About halfway there the sensors finally decided the pressures were OK and the light went out. I then turned back around and started towards Wickenburg.
We did one geocache about halfway between Salome and Wickenburg, but after arrival in town headed for the Horseshoe Café in downtown Wickenburg for lunch. We had eaten here last year and found it to be a great little café. It is a small, hometown type place with a dozen tables that seemed to be a favorite of the locals. It has also been cited by Arizona Highways, a very respected publication, as one of the ten best places to eat in Arizona. We again had a great meal, with great prices and wonderful, friendly service. Peggy and Vernon agreed that it was a great place to eat. Anyone in Wickenburg around breakfast or lunch (not open at night) could not do better than the Horseshoe Café right on Highway 60, a block East of the Highway 93 turnoff.
After lunch we started doing some geocaching in the Wickenburg area. We ended up with a total of 10 caches for the afternoon, including the one we did on the way to town. We found a couple of interesting places including the Hassayampa River Preserve, just South of town on Highway 60. The Preserve is on the site of a turn of the century dude ranch and includes a visitor’s center with nice exhibits on the flora and fauna of the central Arizona desert, and a series of nice hiking trails. We toured the visitor’s center to get the clues we needed for the cache find, but didn’t do any hiking. It was still in the low 40's so it was a little chilly for walking around. We also did a cache on the site of one of the original Arizona highway rest stops. Highway 60, which runs Northwest out of the Phoenix area to Wickenburg, and then back Southwest out of Wickenburg back towards I-10 and into California, was the main route from Phoenix to Los Angeles up until the 1980's when they finally put I-10 through from Quartzsite to Phoenix. Back before freeways Arizona used to put up rest areas along the main highways which consisted of a parking area with a couple of ramadas with picnic tables which had palm fronds on the roof for shade. Some had BBQ grills for cooking lunch. The one along Highway 60 about ten miles South of Wickenburg still has the original low stone wall which used to separate the rest area from the road, along with two large stone BBQ fireplaces. The ramadas and picnic tables are no longer there and the rest area is located on what appears to be a hill above the road. Actually, when they built the new four lane divided road back in the 70's they cut through the hill, so the rest area is actually on the original grade of the road. We would have never noticed the rest area except for the cache because it is a dozen feet above the current road grade. After caching we did a little light shopping and then headed home where we crashed for the night. By the way, our caching efforts today put us over the 2,100 finds milestone. Yea!
Friday, February 4th, the freeze has finally lifted! We woke up to a temperature over the freezing mark. Not very far mind you, 34 degrees, but nonetheless above the ice point. We decided to have a “home” day, so we just stayed in, watched TV, working on the computers, and took care of some light chores.
Saturday, February 5th - Happy Birthday to Me! I woke up this morning with “will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four,” the lyrics to Paul McCartney’s “When I’m 64," going through my head. They stuck with me all day. That, and the thought that in a 360 days I will be on Medicare! Yea! About 1:30 in the afternoon we got in the car, along with the Bullocks, and headed for Quartzsite for some caching and my birthday dinner. We cached for a couple hours, finding a total of five caches. We also made a couple of shopping stops in Quartzsite. Around 4:00 we stopped for dinner. I had decided that I wanted to go to a place called The Grubstake in Quartzsite. It’s a rugged cowboy bar and restaurant on the North end of town that we have eaten at a couple times during previous visits to Quartzsite they have a lot of stuff on the menu, but I haven’t had anything other than the fish and chips, which is their trademark item. On Fridays during the RV show period, which is when we are normally in Quartzsite, the line to get in the place is an hour or more for their all you can eat fish dinner. It is, by far, the best fish and chips dinner I have had, anywhere, ever! Although it is all you can eat on Fridays, I don’t believe I have ever seen anyone order more. The initial order, which is the normal portion (available anytime), is two huge pieces of Haddock, a giant pile of fries, and some coleslaw. It is more than enough for most people, including me. I managed to finish mine, but Jackie took some home with her. After dinner we drove back to Salome, about 40 miles, and made it home before dark. Weather point, it made it up to 70 today - the cold spell has passed. Yippee.
Super Bowl Sunday, February 6th, dawned showing promise of another mild day. We spent the morning and early afternoon relaxing in the coach. About 4:00 p.m. Peggy and Vernon came over to watch the big game with us. We would have liked to watch it on the big screen outside, but with the game being late in the afternoon it would be a bit too chilly. We set out the snacks and cocktails and watched my Green Bay Packers take the Steelers to school! I think they did quite well for an underdog team. Although I grew up for the most part in Arizona, I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and have always been a Packers fan. I mean, it’s not like I am a huge football fan - the super bowl is probably the only game I watch end to end all year - but if someone had asked who I was rooting for, it would have been the Packers. Go Cheeseheads! After the game Peggy and Vernon headed back to their coach and we chilled the rest of the night.
Monday, February 7th was our seventh wedding anniversary. We don’t exchange gifts on any holidays, birthdays or anniversaries, but we did exchange cards. Happy, happy us!! After lunch we got into Peggy and
Vernon’s Jeep for an afternoon of caching. Peggy and Vernon have a Jeep Wrangler, the four door version, and enjoy getting out on the back roads. Unfortunately, they have been hobbled for the last week without a spare tire. As I mentioned about a week ago, they went out geocaching on their own one morning and cut a tire and have had problems finding a replacement spare. Saturday, while we were in
Quartzsite we stopped at a tire shop and found that they had a used tire of the right size. Yesterday Vernon took the Jeep in and had it mounted and now they are back in business, so today we are going out to do some “real” Jeeping. (Some Wrangler owners don’t think Grand Cherokees are “real Jeeps”)Today’s destination was Alamo Lake, a large manmade lake about 45 miles North of Salome on the Bill Williams River. Back in the 80's I used to go fishing at Alamo Lake a lot. It is (or at least used to be) one of the best big mouth bass lakes in the state. I also recall from camping up there a couple times that it is also the rattlesnake capital of Arizona, at least in the winter. I saw more rattlers up there in one weekend than I saw all the rest of the time I lived and camped in Arizona. We picked up one cache off the road on the way up to the lake and then got seven more around the lake itself. Surprisingly, we found three FTF caches up there. FTF means “first to find” and in caching is considered a big deal. The first person to find a new cache after it is published gets the FTF. In all of our caching we only have two and both were from back in 2008 in Iowa. I had seen these FTFs almost a week ago, but we didn’t think we would get up to Alamo. When we decided to go up there the caches still did not show anyone having found them. Sure enough, when we found the caches there were no signatures on the logs. YEA! Since Peggy and Vernon are fairly new to caching we let them take two of the FTFs and we took one. On the way back from caching we stopped at two other caches just to round out the numbers to ten finds. After we got back to the RV park we sat outside with Peggy and Vernon until sunset having cocktails and chatting. This was the first time it was nice enough in the late afternoon to sit outside and enjoy it. After dark we went in the coach for dinner and TV.
Tuesday, February 8th was another anniversary of sorts for us. February 8th was the day I reunited with Jackie after being out of contact for 21 years. I had first met her in Hawthorne, California back in 1976 while on a prisoner transportation trip. I worked for the Sheriff’s Office in Phoenix and was assigned to the fugitive apprehension unit. We saw each other off and on over the course of a year or so until I was transferred to narcotics enforcement and stopped traveling out of state. In early 1998 I relocated her on the internet through her real estate license, which I remembered she had, contacted her and ultimately went to visit her on February 8th, 1998. Six months later I moved from Phoenix to Indio to be with her. We have always celebrated this “reunion” anniversary.
Around mid-morning we climbed back into Peggy and Vernon’s Jeep and went out to do some back country caching. Vernon likes to visit old mines and ghost towns and we had told him about a cache located near an old mine called the Yuma Mine. I told him it was a couple of miles up into the mountains on some rough trails, but that we had visited it last year and enjoyed it. It was also only about 20 miles or so from the RV park. They were game so we headed up there, ultimately arriving at the Yuma Mine. We found the cache and were looking around the mine area when a big four wheel drive truck came up the road and stopped. Since the road dead ends at the mine, we knew they were coming here. It turned out to be a couple of older guys who have leased the mine, along with a number of other mining claims in the area. We chatted with them for quite a while, learning the history of the mine, which we had never known. It turns out that the mine, which was a horizontal shaft into the mountain rather than the more common vertical shaft, was a copper mine. It was originally started during WW-II and produced copper ore for the war effort. The usable copper ran out, but the owners continued until the 90's working the mine for semi precious stones such as malachite and chrysocolla. The guys we were talking to were looking for more veins of these type of stones in a number of them mines in the area.
After the mine trip we drove back down towards the RV park and did a couple of other caches before driving into Salome and eating a late lunch/early dinner at the diner there. The restaurant, now called the Salome Café, started out as Sheffler’s Café and Soda Fountain back in the 40's when Highway 60 was the primary route from Phoenix to Los Angeles. There is still a Sheffler’s motel right across the street from the café. The food was pretty simple diner fare, but pretty tasty. After lunch we went back to the park and I spent a hour or so packing things up in preparation for our departure the next day.
Wednesday, February 9th was another travel day. We were only going 54 miles, from Salome, Arizona to Ehrenberg, Arizona located on the Colorado River just off of I-10, across the river from Blythe, California. We left Salome about 10:00 and arrived an hour or so later at the Colorado River Oasis RV Resort in Ehrenberg. Since the distance was so short we didn’t even hook up the car in tow - Jackie just followed me. This park is another one of our Western Horizon parks and we will be here for two weeks. We got a nice spot at the back of the resort, only a couple hundred feet from the river. I can see the river
flowing by out of the back window of the coach as I write this. Very soothing. Peggy and Vernon, who are still traveling with us, got a spot right next to ours. We spent most of the afternoon getting settled in. About 3:00 p.m. we got together in Peggy and Vernon’s coach along with Doug and Linda Stoudt, some other friends of ours. Regular readers may recall that Doug and Linda were our “tail gunners” on the Alaska trip back in 2009. The tail gunner is part of the staff that takes care of the caravan participants. This was the same trip that we first met Peggy and Vernon on, so it was a reunion of sorts. We spent the evening talking, catching up and having a light dinner of tacos and rice.Our arrival here in Ehrenburg will close this episode of our travel chronicle. We will publish again in a couple weeks when we leave here and head South to the Yuma area. Until our next chapter, stay safe, be happy and enjoy every day to the fullest.
